


A Handful of Dust

by Sulwen



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Glam Rock RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-11
Updated: 2011-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sulwen/pseuds/Sulwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is falling apart.  Adam runs.  Tommy gets left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Handful of Dust

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something weird and stylistic. This is it. Be aware: there are a lot of unanswered questions in this story. You can ask them if you want, but the answers are up to you.

When it happens, it happens quickly.

The world is out of control, with no one to blame, nothing to be done but sit and watch it happen. The planet fights itself, more hostile every day. Rivers jump their banks. Storms brew and hover, brooding in the sky for weeks at a time. The ground shakes, uneasy tremors, perhaps the aftershocks of one earthquake, perhaps the foreshadowing of the next. Blood simmers hot and hotter, burns its way through thinning veins. Fists are thrown over the smallest of quarrels, over half-finished dinner plates, the sound of bruising flesh drowned out by the breaking of glass, the splashing of wine. Nations who have pleasantly squabbled since the beginning of time begin to chafe at each other, narrow their eyes across border lines. Men in black suits whisper behind their hands, and behind every closed door is a flurry of activity. The people grow uneasy, sensing all they are not told, a strange twisting in the gut, a niggling at the back of the mind. They are in need of true leaders, of brave souls who can be good, who can be strong, even in the most difficult of times.

Lacking that, their government gives them the next best thing – a distraction.

*

Adam...Adam doesn't understand. Adam thinks they can stand up, can fight back. Tommy's never been so grateful that Neil is still with him, has always stayed with him, Neil who has always recognized the darkness in the world. It's Neil who gets Adam out just in time, just hours before the LA raids begin in earnest. Word is that some of their friends have made it away with them, those who were close enough, quick enough. Tommy gets a text as he peers out from behind his curtains, watching the smoke rising over the city, the sirens coming closer. He doesn't recognize the number and there's no name given, but he doesn't doubt for a moment who the message is from.

_sry i couldnt say gbye_

Tommy stares at it for a long moment, the words hard to read in the flickering light of distant fires. The phone slips from his limp fingers and hits the ground too hard. He follows after it, slumping down against the wall, face buried in his hands. Adam's voice rings in his head, one sentence like a broken record spinning over and over through his thoughts. It's from the last time he saw Adam in person. Maybe the last time he ever will.

_“At least you don't have anything to worry about, Tommy. You're straight.”_

*

He's never claimed otherwise. It doesn't matter.

They come in the darkness of the morning, when Tommy's sleeping, with a noise like battle, like the end of days. He knows it's futile and fights them anyway, fights until he's bruised and bleeding and crushed into the floor under the weight of muscles and body armor, a rifle pressed into the soft of his neck.

They read him no rights.

*

The facility means complete isolation from the world, but bits and pieces trickle in sometimes, mostly with the new arrivals. Tommy learns about his sudden fame from these miserable souls, the way his name smatters talk radio like so much red paint, the way the kisses he and Adam shared have become an agent of fear, a blaring television warning for those who would “hide behind words while condemning themselves with actions.”

Once in a while, Tommy thinks about trying to talk some sense into them, trying to convince them that they're wrong. But there is never any real hope in these moments, never enough to convince him to follow through. They don't care about sense. Don't care about the truth. They plan to make an example of him. More and more often, he wishes they would just get it over with, take away the waiting, the suspense, the boredom.

Sometimes, in the dark, he taps out fingerings on his stomach and hears music in his head. It's harder and harder to remember how the song goes.

*

There's a morning when the guards – “attendants,” he's meant to call them – don't come to unlock his room. He stares at the door with wide eyes, feeling awake for the first time in days, weeks, all the blurry indeterminate time he's been here, and wonders.

By the next morning, his throat is painfully dry, and every thought is shot through with an overlay of _thirsty._

Time goes hazy after that, seconds slowing and stretching in a thick viscous drip, then slipping away all at once until the sun is gone again. The floor is cool and solid, and it's where Tommy falls, where he has no choice but to stay.

He expects fear. Despair. Numbness. The anger takes him by surprise.

He's angry at Adam more than anyone, and it's unreasonable, unwarrented, but all the world is senseless these days and he can't be bothered to care. He imagines Adam boarding a plane, Neil practically shoving him along, imagines Adam ticking off the people he's chosen to protect, making sure they're safe. Imagines him thinking of Tommy, waving a dismissive hand. _He's straight. He's safe._

But nothing is safe, not anymore, and when it came right down to it, Adam had _left_ him, left him here to be captured and held and locked in this room, this room that will be his last.

It's his last thought before the darkness fills his eyes.

*

He wakes to the most beautiful sensation he's ever felt in his life, that _anyone_ has ever felt – water against his lips.

His other senses wake up slowly, one at a time, bits of the picture falling into place. Arms around his body, holding him, cradling him like a child. Words floating through the air, murmured nonsense words that say many, many things, but all mean _I'm sorry._ Fingers holding the bottle to his mouth...fingers that are heavy with rings, that have black painted sloppily over the nails. The kind of fingers that could get you arrested.

Tommy forces himself to turn, to look, a full-body effort that is very nearly too much for him. There, looking down at him with tears in his eyes, is Adam. He's too thin, and there are wrinkles around his eyes, his mouth, lines of worry that were never there before. But it doesn't matter, nothing does, because Adam is safe and alive and _here,_ and Tommy gives himself over as easily as he always has, slumping boneless in Adam's arms. And then, suddenly, the darkness is back, but this time...this time it feels like light.


End file.
